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NOSTROMO
«Is it my fault that I am the only man for their purposes?
What angry nonsense are you talking, mother? Would you
rather have me timid and foolish, selling water-melons on
the market-place or rowing a boat for passengers along
the harbour, like a soft Neapolitan without courage or reputation? Would you have a young man live like a monk? I do not
believe it. Would you want a monk for your eldest girl? Let
her grow. What are you afraid of? You have been angry with
me for everything I did for years; ever since you fi rst spoke to
me, in secret from old Giorgio, about your Linda. Husband to
one and brother to the other, did you say? Well, why not! I like
the little ones, and a man must marry some time. But ever since
that time you have been making little of me to everyone. Why?
Did you think you could put a collar and chain on me as if
I were one of the watch-dogs they keep over there in the railway yards? Look here, Padrona, I am the same man who came
ashore one evening and sat down in the thatched ranche you
lived inat that time on the other side of the town and told you
all about himself. You were not unjust to me then. What has
happened since? I am no longer an insignifi cant youth. A good
name, Giorgio says, is a treasure, Padrona».
«They have turned your head with their praises», gasped
the sick woman. «They have been paying you with words. Your
folly shall betray you into poverty, misery, starvation. The very
leperos shall laughat you – the great Capataz».
Nostromo stood for a time as if struck dumb. She never
lookedat him. A self-confi dent, mirthless smile passed quickly
from his lips, and then he backed away. His disregarded fi gure sank down beyond the doorway. He descended the stairs
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JOSEPH CONRAD
backwards, with the usual sense of having been somehow baffl ed by this woman’s disparagement of this reputati on he had
obtained and desired to keep.
Downstairs in the big kitchen a candle was burning, surrounded by the shadows of the walls, of the ceiling, but no
ruddy glare fi lled the open square of the outer door. The carriage with Mrs. Gould and D on Martin, preceded by the horseman bearing the torch, had gone on to the jetty. Dr. Monygham,
who had remained, sat on the corner of a hard wood table near
the candlestick, his seamed, shaven face inclined sideways, his
arms crossed on his breast, his lips pursed up, and his prominent eyes glaring stonily up on the fl oor of black earth. Near
the overhanging mantel of the fi replace, where the pot of water was still boiling violently, old Giorgio held his chin in his
hand, one foot advanced, as if arrested by a sudden thought.
«Adios, viejo», said Nostromo, feeling the handle of his
revolver in the belt and loosening his knife in its sheath.
He picked up a blue poncho lined with red from the table,
and put it over his head. «Adios, look after the things in my
sleeping-room, and if you hear from me no more, give up
the box to Paquita. There is not much of value there, except
my new serape from Mexico, and a few silver buttons on my
best jacket. No matter! The things will look well enough on
the next lover she gets, and the man need not be afraid I shall
linger on earth after I am dead, like those Gringos that haunt
the Azuera».
Dr. Monygham twisted his lips into a bitter smile. After
old Giorgio, with an almost imperceptible nod and without
a word, had gone up the narrow stairs, he said –
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NOSTROMO
«Why, Capataz! I thought you could never fail in anything».
Nostromo, glancing contemptuouslyat the doctor, lingered
in the doorway rolling a cigarette, then struck a match, and, after lighting it, held the burning piece of wood above his head
till the fl ame nearly touched his fi ngers.
«No wind!» he muttered to himself. «Look here, senor –
do you know the nature of my undertaking?»
Dr. Monygham nodded sourly.
«It is as if I were taking up a curse up on me, senor doctor. A man with a treasure on this coast will have every knife
raised against him in every place up on the shore. You see that,
senor doctor? I shall fl oat along with a spell up on my life till
I meet somewhere the north-bound steamer of the Company,
and then indeed they will talk about the Capataz of the Sulaco
Cargadores from one end of America to another».
Dr. Monygham laughed his short, throaty laugh. Nostromo
turned round in the doorway.
«But if your worship can fi nd any other man ready and fi t
for such business I will stand back. I am not exactly tired of
my life, though I am so poor that I can carry all I have with
myself on my horse’s back».
«You gamble too much, and never say ‘no’ to a pretty face,
Capataz», said Dr. Monygham, with sly simplicity. «That’s not
the way to make a fortune. But nobody that I know ever suspected you of being poor. I hope you have made a good bargain
in case you come back safe from this adventure».
«What bargain would your worship have made?» asked
Nostromo, blowing the smoke out of his lips through
the doorway.
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JOSEPH CONRAD
Dr. Monygham listened up the staircase for a moment before he answered, with another of his short, abrupt laughs –
«Illustrious Capataz, for taking the curse of death up on
my back, as you call it, nothing else but the whole treasure
would do».
Nostromo vanished out of the doorway with a grunt of
discontentat this jeering answer. Dr. Monygham heard him
gallop away. Nostromo rode furiously in the dark. There were
lights in the buildings of the O.S.N. Company near the wharf,
but before he got there he met the Gould carriage. The horseman preceded it with the torch, whose light showed the white
mules trotting, the portly Ignacio driving, and Basilio with
the carbine on the box. From the dark body of the landau
Mrs. Gould’s voice cried, «They are waiting for you, Capataz!»
She was returning, chilly and excited, with Decoud’s pocketbook still held in her hand. He had confi ded it to her to send to
his sister. «Perhaps my last words to her», he had said, pressing
Mrs. Gould’s hand.
The Capataz never checked his speed.At the head of
the wharf vague fi gures with rifl es leapt to the head of his
horse; others closed up on him – cargadores of the company posted by Captain Mitchell on the watch.At a word from
him they fell back with subservient murmurs, recognizing
his voice.At the other end of the jetty, near a cargo crane, in
a dark group with glowing cigars, his name was pronounced
in a tone of relief. Most of the Europeans in Sulaco were there,
rallied round Charles Gould, as if the silver of the mine had
been the emblem of a comm on cause, the symbol of the supreme importance of material interests. They had loaded it
294
NOSTROMO
into the lighter with their own hands. Nostromo recognized
D on Carlos Gould, a thin, tall shape standing a little apart
and silent, to whom another tall shape, the engineer-in-chief,
said aloud, «If it must be lost, it is a milli on times better that it
should go to the bottom of the sea».
Martin Decoud called out from the lighter, «Au revoir ,
messieurs, till we clasp hands again over the new-born Occidental Republic». Only a subdued murmur responded to his
clear, ringing tones; and then it seemed to him that the wharf
was fl oating away into the night; but it was Nostromo, who was
already pushing against a pile with one of the heavy sweeps.
Decoud did not move; the effect was that of being launched
into space. After a splash or two there was not a sound but
the thud of Nostromo’s feet leaping about the boat. He hoisted the big sail; a breath of wind fanned Decoud’s cheek. Everything had vanished but the light of the lantern Captain
Mitchell had hoisted up on the postat the end of the jetty to
guide Nostromo out of the harbour.
The two men, unable to see each other, kept silent till
the lighter, slipping before the fi tful breeze, passed out between almost invisible headlands into the still deeper darkness of the gulf. For a time the lantern on the jetty shone after
them. The wind failed, then fanned up again, but so faintly
that the big, half-decked boat slipped along with no more
noise than if she had been suspended in the air.
«We are out in the gulf now», said the calm voice of Nostromo. A moment after he added, «Senor Mitchell has lowered
the light».
«Yes», said Decoud; «nobody can fi nd us now».
295
JOSEPH CONRAD
A great recrudescence of obscurity embraced the boat.
The sea in the gulf was as black as the clouds above. Nostromo,
after striking a couple of matches to get a glimpse of the boatcompass he had with him in the lighter, steered by the feel of
the wind on his cheek.
It was a new experience for Decoud, this mysteriousness of
the great waters spread out strangely smooth, as if their restlessness had been crushed by the weight of that dense night.
The Placido was sleeping profoundly under its black poncho.
The main thing now for success was to get away from
the coast and gain the middle of the gulf before day broke.
The Isabels were somewhereat hand. «On your left as you
look forward, senor», said Nostromo, suddenly. When his
voice ceased, the enormous stillness, without light or sound,
seemed to affect Decoud’s senses like a powerful drug.
He didn’t even knowat times whether he were asleep or awake.
Like a man lost in slumber, he heard nothing, he saw nothing.
Even his hand held before his face did not exist for his eyes.
The change from the agitation, the passions and the dangers,
from the sights and sounds of the shore, was so complete that
it would have resembled death had it not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this foretaste of eternal peace they fl oated
vivid and light, like unearthly clear dreams of earthly things
that may haunt the souls freed by death from the misty atmosphere of regrets and hopes. Decoud shook himself, shuddered
a bit, though the air that drifted past him was warm. He had
the strangest sensati on of his soul having just returned into
his body from the circumambient darkness in which land, sea,
sky, the mountains, and the rocks were as if they had not been.
296
NOSTROMO
Nostromo’s voice was speaking, though he,at the tiller, was
also as if he were not. «Have you been asleep, D on Martin?
Caramba! If it were possible I would think that I, too, have
dozed off. I have a strange noti on somehow of having dreamt
that there was a sound of blubbering, a sound a sorrowing
man could make, somewhere near this boat. Something between a sigh and a sob».
«Strange!» muttered Decoud, stretched up on the pile of
treasure boxes covered by many tarpaulins. «Could it be that
there is another boat near us in the gulf? We could not see it,
you know».
Nostromo laughed a littleat the absurdity of the idea. They
dismissed it from their minds. The solitude could almost be
felt. And when the breeze ceased, the blackness seemed to
weigh up on Decoud like a stone.
«This is overpowering», he muttered. «Do we moveat all,
Capataz?»
«Not so fast as a crawling beetle tangled in the grass», answered Nostromo, and his voice seemed deadened by the thick
veil of obscurity that felt warm and hopeless all about them.
There were long periods when he made no sound, invisible and
inaudible as if he had mysteriously stepped out of the lighter.
In the featureless night Nostromo was not even certain
which way the lighter headed after the wind had completely
died out. He peered for the islands. There was not a hint of
them to be seen, as if they had sunk to the bottom of the gulf.
He threw himself down by the side of Decoudat last, and
whispered into his ear that if daylight caught them near
the Sulaco shore through want of wind, it would be pos-
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JOSEPH CONRAD
sible to sweep the lighter behind the cliffat the high end of
the Great Isabel, where she would lie concealed. Decoud
was surprisedat the grimness of his anxiety. To him the removal of the treasure was a political move. It was necessary
for several reasons that it should not fall into the hands of
Montero, but here was a man who took another view of this
enterprise. The Caballeros over there did not seem to have
the slightest idea of what they had given him to do. Nostromo, as if affected by the gloom around, seemed nervously
resentful. Decoud was surprised. The Capataz, indifferent to
those dangers that seemed obvious to his companion, allowed
himself to become scornfully exasperated by the deadly nature of the trust put, as a matter of course, into his hands. It
was more dangerous, Nostromo said, with a laugh and a curse,
than sending a man to get the treasure that people said was
guarded by devils and ghosts in the deep ravines of Azuera.
«Senor», he said, «we must catch the steamerat sea. We must
keep out in the open looking for her till we have eaten and
drunk all that has been put on board here. And if we miss
her by some mischance, we must keep away from the land till
we grow weak, and perhaps mad, and die, and drift dead, until
one or another of the steamers of the Compania comes up on
the boat with the two dead men who have saved the treasure.
That, senor, is the only way to save it; for, don’t you see? for
us to come to the land anywhere in a hundred miles along
this coast with this silver in our possessi on is to run the naked breast against the point of a knife. This thing has been
given to me like a deadly disease. If men discover it I am dead,
and you, too, senor, since you would come with me. There is
298
NOSTROMO
enough silver to make a whole province rich, let alone a seaboard pueblo inhabited by thieves and vagabonds. Senor, they
would think that heaven itself sent these riches into their
hands, and would cut our throats without hesitation. I would
trust no fair words from the best man around the shores of
this wild gulf. Refl ect that, even by giving up the treasureat the fi rst demand, we would not be able to save our lives. Do
you understand this, or must I explain?»
«No, you needn’t explain», said Decoud, a little listlessly.
«I can see it well enough myself, that the possessi on of this
treasure is very much like a deadly disease for men situated
as we are. But it had to be removed from Sulaco, and you were
the man for the task».
«I was; but I cannot believe», said Nostromo, «that its loss
would have impoverished D on Carlos Gould very much. There
is more wealth in the mountain. I have heard it rolling down
the shoots on quiet nights when I used to ride to Rincon to see
a certain girl, after my workat the harbour was done. For years
the rich rocks have been pouring down with a noise like thunder, and the miners say that there is enoughat the heart of
the mountain to thunder on for years and years to come.
And yet, the day before yesterday, we have been fi ghting to
save it from the mob, and to-night I am sent out with it into
this darkness, where there is no wind to get away with; as if it
were the last lot of silver on earth to get bread for the hungry
with. Ha! ha! Well, I am going to make it the most famous and
desperate affair of my life – wind or no wind. It shall be talked
about when the little children are grown up and the grown
men are old. Aha! the Monterists must not get hold of it, I am
299
JOSEPH CONRAD
told, whatever happens to Nostromo the Capataz; and they
shall not have it, I tell you, since it has been tied for safety
round Nostromo’s neck».
«I see it», murmured Decoud. He saw, indeed, that his compani on had his own peculiar view of this enterprise.
Nostromo interrupted his refl ections up on the way men’s
qualities are made use of, without any fundamental knowledge of their nature, by the proposal they should slip the long
oars out and sweep the lighter in the directi on of the Isabels.
It wouldn’t do for daylight to reveal the treasure fl oating within a mile or so of the harbour entrance. The denser the darkness generally, the smarter were the puffs of wind on which
he had reckoned to make his way; but tonight the gulf, under
its poncho of clouds, remained breathless, as if dead rather
than asleep.
D on Martin’s soft hands suffered cruelly, tuggingat the thick handle of the enormous oar. He stuck to it manfully, setting his teeth. He, too, was in the toils of an imaginative existence, and that strange work of pulling a lighter
seemed to belong naturally to the incepti on of a new state,
acquired an ideal meaning from his love for Antonia. For all
their efforts, the heavily laden lighter hardly moved. Nostromo could be heard swearing to himself between the regular
splashes of the sweeps. «We are making a crooked path», he
muttered to himself. «I wish I could see the islands».
In his unskilfulness D on Martin over-exerted himself.
Now and then a sort of muscular faintness would run from
the tips of his aching fi ngers through every fi bre of his body,
and pass off in a fl ush of heat. He had fought, talked, suf-
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